The Morning Wrap: D-Day For The Dera Chief; Rat Alert On Air India

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

As Haryana burns in the wake of the conviction of spiritual guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh for rape, with the Dera Sacha Sauda followers running amok, TS Sudhir revisits the violent 1980s, when another people's leader from Punjab, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, left behind a trail of destruction as well.

The Punjab & Haryana High Court came down on the BJP government of Haryana and at the Centre for its failure to control the marauding mob that broke into a riot as soon as Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape by a special CBI court. Read more.

Technology is breeding a new type of sex offender and lowering the bar for men looking to commit crimes against women, leading experts in online harassment have warned.

Main News

On the eve of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's sentencing by a CBI special court, at least 9,000 cops and paramilitary troops have been deployed, and the Army is kept on standby to ensure security in Rohtak since Sunday.

Two persons were lynched at a village in the Dhupguri block of West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district in the early hours of 27 August, under suspicion of stealing cows. Police has lodged a murder case but no one has been arrested so far.

Several arrested Dera Sacha Sauda protesters have claimed their local leaders bribed or coerced them into assembling in Panchkula ahead of the rape verdict against sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. A few said they were paid ₹1,000-2,000 for each day they spent in Panchkula.

Off The Front Page

India's PV Sindhu had to settle for a silver in the badminton World Championships, after an epic battle with Japan's Nozomi Okuhara. The match saw the ace shuttler getting to the brink of victory, before losing it by a whisker.

Thousands of people assembled at Lalu Prasad's 'BJP Bhagao, Desh Bachao' rally in Patna as 18 parties took a pledge to declare war on the ruling party at the Centre and in several other states across India.

A rat on board a San Francisco flight from New Delhi, run by the national carrier Air India, caused havoc, delaying its departure by 9 hours.

Opinion

The Supreme Court's ruling against the Muslim practice of triple talaq is a lost opportunity of sorts, argues Chintan Chandrachud in The Indian Express, especially since it sets a troubling precedent with its emphasis on religious texts.

How did the Dera Sacha Sauda exert such a mass appeal on its followers so that they unleashed a cycle of havoc after their leader was convicted of rape? Political scientist Shiv Visvanathan explains the mysterious appeal of the sect in The Hindu.

In The Telegraph, Manini Chatterjee explains why the Supreme Court's historic ruling on the right to privacy comes across as a flood of sunshine in the dark times that are upon us.